For your sake, friend, anything
by robinwitch1
Summary: An incident from Elder Scrolls Online roleplay. Maelen, a Breton sorcerer with a very complex and obscure past, is tasked with recovering a soul to keep a daedra friend from discorporating in a disastrously complete manner.


**For your sake, friend, anything.** (fragment)

* * *

 _Maelen here is my chief roleplay figure, a Breton sorcerer with silver hair and a perpetually worried expression. She's trying to put her life together after finding out that the first three years of it had been much more eventful than she had thought. Among other things, she's found out that her mother was both an acolyte of Sithis, the Lord of the Void, and a practicing necromancer in the tradition of Vastarie, Mannimarco's old rival from the days necromancy had first been developed. This was probably the reason that both her mother and her father were murdered by Worm Cult agents when Maelen was three. She survived by "luck" and the assistance of a Khajiit merchant she met by chance on the road, who took her to the Silverhoof clan to be raised. When she was sixteen, she joined the Beldama Wyrd, but issues between them led her to part them as friends four years later and travel to Daggerfall to become a member of the Mages' Guild. Over the last year and a half or so, she has progressively recovered her memories of her early life, and has found she has a strong hereditary connection both with the necromantic arts and with darker lore, though she is not quite sure of the full extent of her powers yet. She has also acquired a number of unusual friends, including a high-ranking female daedra from Coldharbor who has fallen in love with her, although Maelen has another relationship with a woman she plans to marry. They have not clashed over this, though, and Maelen still enjoys helping her daedra friend, though in this case the request from her friend was more than a little unusual..._

* * *

"He's leading the forces fighting at the gates of the citadel now," her friend had explained. "They have attacked us over and over again, and I am being drained dry. Please, if you can, kill him and procure his soul for me. Without it, I'm not sure I can live, and if he is killed, his troops will retreat again and give me some breathing space." Her eyes had glittered feverishly in Coldharbor's darkness as she spoke, and Maelen became apprehensive. They would never be anything but friends, but...

"I'll do it for you," she had said at once, a part of her mind wondering why she was so decisive in such an ambiguous situation. "But wouldn't it be enough just to kill him and drive the army away? Why do you need his soul?"

"To return. Return to here, to health," her friend had answered. "If he leaves, victorious or defeated, with his soul, he will take all my energy with him and I will...die. Or as close as a daedra can get to true death. Become a not-thing, a vague puff of mist in the Void. Recorporate after uncounted years, to be sure, but there will be so little of me left that it will take half of eternity for me to re-form. I don't want to be away that long..."

She smiled. Maelen had little trouble imagining why she didn't want to be away so long. From an abstract point of view, it might be best to use this contingency to dismiss her into the far future, but... friends were friends. Whatever inconveniences the future might hold.

Maelen smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and clumped heavily down the stairs in her armor toward the noise of the two armies clashing.

The battle had already been joined when Maelen entered it, but she found little difficulty in making her way across the battlefield to her target. Few cared to face her; those who did rarely traded more than a blow or two with her before falling, or more usually, fleeing. She did not pursue; her attention was elsewhere. It struck her that she seemed to be less cutting a path than following one, and she stopped momentarily and shook her head. Something she did not yet understand was going on.

She sensed that she was not altogether easy in her mind about carrying out her friend's wish. She knew nothing of the target or the army he led, so it was not that. She genuinely cared for her daedra friend, and believed that she had spoken true when she said she needed this soul or she would perish. Still…. Maelen wished she had asked more questions about the circumstances. Why take his soul? Wouldn't it be enough to simply defeat the fellow and send him off home?

It was too night-flavored, too necromantic for Maelen to be comfortable with, even with her new knowledge of her heritage. And that heritage….pausing for a moment, she took out the purple gem she had been given to capture the soul with, and frowned. It looked like one of Mannimarco's design, and indeed, nearly every soul gem that existed was one of the soul prisons devised by him. She could not use it. It would be to betray her mother's tradition - her tradition now.

But how, then, could she keep her word? Briefly, she considered taking the man prisoner and killing him in her presence, but quickly dismissed the idea. It was dishonorable, difficult, and came to the same thing in the end, really. How was she to avoid breaking faith? Then her mind went back years, to when she was with the Wyrd and had several times gone out to recover rare books and scrolls for one of their patrons, the Lord of Memory, Hermaeus Mora, scryer of the tides of Fate.

She had despaired of one esoteric tome. It had been banned for centuries; to be found with quotations, let alone the entire text, could lead to a death sentence. Even the Wyrd spoke of it with a shudder. But when the Lord of Memory had asked her to bring Him a copy, she had gone to an ancient ruin and pulled one from a cavity in a collapsing wall without hesitation. She had somehow known exactly where it was.

When she had delivered it to Hermaeus Mora, one of only three times she met the Lord in person, she had expressed surprise at how simple the mission had been. The Lord of Memory had merely laughed, in his strange, hollow voice, and said, "Sometimes, things happen because they cannot happen otherwise. It is in the weave. You were wise enough to trust Fate, and in return it gifted you success. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last."

 _Nor will it be the last._ Maelen smiled. She knew now what she had to do. She again felt the presence of the Lord of Memory, and realized that although He had not spoken or shown himself, this was another mission from Him, to testify on His behalf. Once more, Fate was with her.

She pushed forward again, to near her target. Soldiers raised their blades against her, but when they saw her face, they fell back, silent. She walked forward, her own blade held low, at rest, followed by her clannfear, with her Twilight Matriarch hovering above. The hush spread until the flapping of the Matriarch's wings was the loudest sound that could be heard.

The space between them cleared, and her target looked at her steadily, his weapons lowered as well. His face was white as a sheet, but his voice was firm. "On behalf of whom do you come here?" he asked.

Maelen replied, "I come with a message from Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Memory, Scryer of the Tides of Fate. The Prince has bidden me tell you that the hour of your death is at hand, but not by my sword, or by that of any other."

The knight nodded, but said nothing.

"When you rose on the morning you began this quest," Maelen continued, telling a story she had not known she knew before she began to speak, "you staggered with a violent pain in your chest. For long moments, you could not stand. Your wife begged you to give the command to another and remain resting. Because you are a valiant knight, you disdained passing on your responsibility to another. Every day since then, the pain has recurred. Every day, stronger. This morning, you felt it for the last time."

"Such is your fate. Fools might laugh at you for dying on a battlefield, but not of a blade. But you have done your best, and you have bravely accepted your fate and honourably led your army here. It was Fate that struck you down, and against Fate even the gods struggle in vain. It is Fate that your army will return, bearing your lifeless body, the army itself defeated but not destroyed. It is Fate that you meet me here to tell you of this in the Lord's name. Have you any last words for your comrades to carry back for you?"

There was a long silence. Looking at the knight's face, Maelen could see the lines of old and new pain, clear traces of a long battle with a failing body.

The knight said, "I thank my soldiers. I love my wife and my children. I have fought and now will die in pursuit of what I believe is right. There is nothing more."

Maelen replied, "Nothing more is needed for honor. Your army will return unscathed."

"Thank you," the knight replied.

The knight was lying on the ground now, looking up toward the sky. Maelen knelt by his head. She knew what to do, just as earlier she had known what to say, though before she stepped onto the battlefield she could not have put either into words. She spoke to the dying knight, "I commend your soul to the Dread Lord and name it _rithall'kyuria rithall'marya soryata_ , one that both comes and goes in honor. There is no higher praise."

The knight replied, "Arkay's mercy be upon me," and then with a single shudder, he closed his eyes and died.

As he breathed his last, Maelen passed her hands over his face. One was holding a small sapphire gem that looked frail and weak when compared with a regular soul gem: it was a soul-shelter of Vastarie's school, an inheritance from her mother, which would retain the soul a few days, but no more. She placed the gem, glowing now instead of dark, in an inner pocket of her robe, and stood, saying, "He has departed. Now, do you the same, in peace."

The battle was over. Maelen turned and walked back the way she came, and the warriors of both armies fell away, leaving her a wide path. She turned once and saw the knight's body being lifted onto a bier, and raised her sword to salute it. Then she turned again to her path, carrying the gem and the soul that lay inside it back to her friend, as the silent battlefield slowly cleared and darkness fell.


End file.
